i'm curious, does this serve any purpose to intentionally clip the signal?

the reason i'm asking is because i have a CD where several tracks are heavily clipped (60+ consecutive samples in some instances), while the rest of the CD is fine. its quite obvious that a limiter was used on all of the tracks (aside from those that clip), and the CD is a continuous mix. erm.. correction: not really a full mix, but the tracks do overlap into one another

Here's an oveclipped record



I this record (Maddkatt Courtship - I Know electric boy), only the electronic boom boom is clipped, and very much clipped, as you can see.
The result is a raw sound, not so unpleasant, it might be on purpose, in order to get the flat sound of a sono playing boom boom. It sound vroom vroom, in fact.

Do you want a short MP3 sample, or rather lpac or monkey, because this might cause problem for MP3 (another future killer sample ? ) ?

Reload the picture if it doesn't show.

hehe... yeah i can see it.. it looks awful. lets say its done on purpose. how can u make sure that only the "electronic boom boom" part clips? i mean, if the intention is to generate some kind of effect, why not just clip it when you arrange and put the track together instead of clipping the whole song in the final mastering stage?

It is used to increase dynamics as well: In a production of Mahler's eight symphony ("of a Thousand", you get the hint) the last two minutes are partially clipped. Funny is that the peak of the first minute of the same track is not above -30dB (!).
I believe this is not used to achieve a certain "effect" on the sound itself (its barely -- if at all -- noticeable) but just to increase the dynamic impact of this final moment.



Edit: added picture
Continuum

Same here : Edvard Gried - Peer Gynt, highlights, Neeme Jarvi, in the hall of the mountain king :



The "highlighted" part in black is a clarinet (I think), -50 db peak (-60 RMS) !

But it is not on purpose, or it is completely absurd. I think the dynamics are the one of a real symphonic orchestra, but first the clipping is bad : treble is very harsh, and the recording lacks the impact of the percussions that have been clipped. It just makes a lot of noise. Then there is very much background noise (-70 db rms, that is 10 db only under the lowest instrument), and looking at the waveform with maximum zoom, it jumps 4 by 4. It means the definition is 14 bits only, instead of 16. It must have been boosted from a 16 bits original master. The recording was DDD (the noise must come from the micros), made in 1987.

I whish the last part had been soft-limited instead of clipped.

hmm.. I think they increased the volume so the radio broadcasts of this 2-hrs works obtain more hearers.

If I have time, I'll check some other loud music pieces to find out, how often this happens.